Simple SEO – Links and Content

Search Engine Optimization can be very difficult to understand and seem overwhelming.  In reality, it can also be pretty damn simple.  At the end of the day SEO comes down to four main things, content, links, content, links.  Below are a few tips for both of these.

Content

Let’s be real, if you’re wondering why you only have 5 blog visits a day, it’s probably because your content sucks.  It’s a harsh reality, but it’s the truth.  Of course, if you have only been blogging for a month or two, then don’t expect to have 1,000 hits a day.  You have all heard the phrase that “content is king“.  No matter how people try to dispute that, it is true.  It is not a popularity contest, if your content sucks, you are not going to become popular.  Let’s get into a few strategies for writing better content.

• Keyword Research – You must know what keywords you want to rank for and bring in traffic for.  If you sell lamps online, do you want to rank for swimming pools?  No, didn’t think so.  You can use free tools such as Google Analytics to track what keywords people are finding your website from.  Google also offers a free keyword research tool that will help you find relevant keywords.
• Keyword Placement – Do not write for the search engines.  Search engines can not read, they just scan.  You can write 1,000 blog posts and have them all ranked on the first page in Google, but if nobody is reading them because they can’t understand a single thing you are saying, what is the point?  Take several of your keywords and be sure to place them in the first paragraph, but write your readers, not just to rank.  This is very important in making sure that your content doesn’t suck.

Like the title states, this is Simple SEO, so there are a lot more details that you can get into to help with your content, but these are the basics and if you follow these two tips you will increase the quality of your content right away.  Now, links.

Links

You have most likely heard people talk about link building strategies.  Some work, some don’t.  Some Google likes, some Google hates.  Let me just say this quickly, link farms don’t work, sorry.  Now, moving on.  I’m going to discuss internal and external links.

Internal Linking – it’s exactly what it seems like.  Links on your site that link to another page in your site.  I’m not going to get into the details of why it works, at least not now, remember this is Simple SEO.  Here are a couple of tips to help your internal linking strategy.

• Link to another post – one of the easiest and best ways to create an internal linking strategy and to simply link to an older post.  This works in cases that you may be doing a follow up post or you want to reference certain things that you said in a previous blog post.
• Link to landing pages – If you are not running a blog, but instead running an e-commerce site, link products to a specific landing page.  If you sell lamps like mentioned above create a landing page for all vintage lamps and be sure to link to that page.

Like I said, very simple SEO today.

External Linking – Once again, exactly what it sounds like, also called inbound links.  These are links that are coming to your site from an external or other site.  Here are a few tips to help your external linking strategies

• Blogrolls – If your blog has a community of bloggers, then you may want to ask to be put on somebody’s blogroll (or if your content is good enough they will probably put you there without having to ask!).
• Guest Posting – I can’t talk about this one enough.  Guest posting has so many positive things to it that I can do a whole post just on that.  But, we are keeping it Simple today.  Submitting a guest post will automatically give you a link back to your site.  You are also going to increase the visibility of your blog because you are reaching viewers from the other person’s blog.  Do a few guest posts, and your subscribers are going to increase.

There is 4 tips to help you start your Simple SEO strategies.  Start with these and you will begin seeing better search results.  Below are a few other quick tips for helping your SEO efforts.

• Google Webmaster Tools – way too many things in there to discuss in this post, but it will let you know if there are any broken links, duplicate content, and provides feedback on your sitemap.
• Stay up to date on SEO.  It changes every single day.  Here are a few blogs that will help you stay up to date.
  • Matt Cutts
  • Search Engine Journal
  • Search Engine Watch
  • SEOmoz

photo credit: Gavin Llewellyn via photopin cc